Year 1 Blog

Welcome to the blog for our Year 1 classes. The year group blogs are a great communication tool. Teachers will be posting news, photographs, details of homework, examples of work, and anything they wish to share with their pupils and parents. Please speak to your class teacher if you have any question, feedback or concerns.

Mrs Foulds

Green Class Teacher

Mrs De Vynck

Purple Class Teacher

We have two year 1 classes. Children in these classes are developing their skills and building on the learning from Foundation Stage. When the children are ready, usually by October half term, the learning becomes based on the Key Stage One National Curriculum Programmes of Study. We still believe that children learn best when the ‘subjects’ are linked in a meaningful way and then basic skills are taught for a real purpose. We encourage the children to take ownership of their learning, ask questions and have a say in the planning process. We hope to motivate all children by taking account of their needs, strengths and interests and provide rich experiences and learning opportunities which will continue to excite them.

Thank you for all the home learning handed in yesterday. It was carefully completed, with spelling days of the week being particularly popular. It is really useful for the children to become proficient at spelling the days of the week, and writing them neatly and quite quickly. They will be writing the date frequently at school and to be able to do so correctly and independently will really help them.

We have asked for a photo of the children as babies to be brought into school, which is to help with understanding about the past and how changes occur over time. We’ll return all the photos later in the term.

Last week Green Class started learning about measuring, using the correctly language to compare different heights – as opposed to lengths. We used pretend flowers to use the appropriate language of measuring height – tall, taller, tallest – small, smaller, smallest.

The children have been thinking about our “wonderful world”. Listening to the song by Louis Armstrong gave them more ideas about what is wonderful and why.

With Mrs Reed, the children completed observational drawings of sunflowers and then painted them. We also read “Katie and The Sunflowers” by James Mayhew and have looked at other paintings by Van Gogh, too.

The children have been delighted to be reunited with the apparatus and take any opportunity to use it!

All the children in Green Class have got off to a great start. The enthusiasm, independence and good humour shown so far bode well for a good year! We have had a few good PE sessions and the photos show a tennis session yesterday, when Mr Draper showed the children some pre-tennis skills on the field. Thank you very much for providing your children with suitable trainers and full PE kits – the good preparation really is very much appreciated! We are starting some our topics, for example thinking about nature, why people find it beautiful or wonderful and finding examples of this wonder ourselves. Here are some of the aspects of nature the children chose in the playground.

We were all very pleased to welcome Ms Hudson back in Year 1 today, when she led a dancing session with each of the classes. The children moved like animals, making up their own moves based on video and a very catchy song Ms Hudson taught us. Thank you for coming in and helping the children’s learning in such a creative way.

We also talked about London, why it is important and what you can see there. This led onto a discussion about what makes the UK special. We talked about tolerance and the freedom to follow your own beliefs, which are two of the important factors which make the UK a good place to live. Here is our mindmap which formed part of the talk.

Bella and Emily read their poems to us clearly and confidently and we enjoyed them very much. Roald Dahl is a popular poet to read out loud!

In Maths groups today, my Maths group explored the practical meaning of “balances”. We talked about it meaning “the same as”, “equal” and “the same on both sides”. We balanced Numicon amounts to show that when totals were the same both sides of the scales balanced, regardless of the individual Numicon tiles in the buckets.

The children also pieced together the 7 continents which make the world, without knowing what they were first of all! They made very valiant attempts, without any support.

Joe read out the poem, about a vegetarian lion, which he had been practising – well done, Joe!

And, also today , the children have drawn their ideas for their “animal home”. Tomorrow we will start to build the home – so please don’t forget those empty boxes. Thank you!

Children are starting to recite their poems to the whole class. We have listened to Ridhi recite a short, funny poem by heart and Lucy read a long poem, which she had practised well. Both were excellent and very clearly spoken, making first-rate performances. We would love to hear more children read poems of their choice to the class. We have poetry books at school, if the children would like to borrow one.

Green Class learnt some new ball skills today, controlling the ball by rolling. They did so well, with everyone getting better at positioning themselves and rolling the balls, that they moved onto the game which is a version of “piggy in the middle”. Here are some children in mid-game. Two are negotiating the exact rules of the game; another boy is deciding which way to send the ball, using tactics to try and fool the child in the middle. And two other children are determined to get to the ball first.

Please could children bring in small boxes, for D&T next week. Tea boxes, or long narrow boxes like tomato puree boxes, or other boxes that size, which are quite thin and easy to undo would be ideal. If you happen to have more than one then please could your child bring the other/s in too, then we will have a selection. I meant to mention this to children on Friday; and will so to the whole class on Monday. Thank you.

The children have been learning about Charles Darwin and have been looking, thinking and questioning. We spent some time on the school field. Why could we only see ants? It could be that the ground was too hard or the children running on the field scared the other creatures or perhaps because there were no big leaves to hide under. We went to different areas and looked again and now have more questions to think about!